Appendix 4 - Implementation Report - WGBH NCAM

The following is the text of an Implementation report prepared by Madeleine Rothberg for an inhouse report and emailed to author on 13 July 2006.

Tracking use of specifications: The Access For All approach is now being used in both commercial and research-based implementations. Specification development did not conform to the originally proposed schedule, and so it has taken longer than expected to reach the implementation phase, but the success of the project is clear in the wide range of ways it is impacting distance education and indeed online information delivery of all kinds. The following implementations are in use:

Web-4-All:
Web-4-All is a system for easily configuring multi-user public access computer workstations. Web-4-All was originally sponsored by Industry Canada for use with their Community Access Program (CAP) where libraries, schools, and community centers across Canada provide internet ready workstations for use by the public. More information about Web-4-All is available at <http://web-4-all.ca/>.

TILE:
The Inclusive Learning Exchange is a revolutionary learning object repository service that responds to the individual needs of the learner. TILE provides the authoring tools, repository architecture, and preference schema needed to support this learner-centric transformation. The service is now available as a functioning prototype and will be implemented across Canada by a network of learning communities from many sectors. By making dynamic web-based broadband e-learning inclusive of people with disabilities TILE will advance e-learning functionality for all learners. TILE demonstrates the potential benefits of personalized courseware for the learner and the impact this would have on the educator or content producer. Through the implementation of the Access For All approach, TILE demonstrates the practical boundaries of transformable content and the tools needed to support the mastery of learner customizable teaching. More information about TILE is available at <http://inclusivelearning.ca/>.

CWIS:
The Internet Scout Project's Collection Workflow Integration System (CWIS) is software to assemble, organize, and share collections of data about resources, like Yahoo! or Google Directory but conforming to international and academic standards for metadata. The software is available for free download from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. CWIS was specifically created to help build collections of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) resources and connect them into NSF's National Science Digital Library, but can be (and is being) used for a wide variety of other purposes. In collaboration with NCAM, facilitated by our joint project Access NSDL, accessibility improvements to CWIS led to the integration of the Access For All approach. CWIS now enables all of its users to build digital library portals that offer a flexible interface to find appropriately accessible learning resources. More information about CWIS is available at <http://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/CWIS/>.

ANGEL:
ANGEL is an innovative web-based learning management system from ANGEL Learning Systems. In collaboration with Penn State University, the ANGEL team created a pilot implementation of Access For All. It includes the ability to adjust the interface to user preferences and to import IMS Content Packaging files with Access For All metadata, appropriately assigning accessible content according to user preferences. They then integrated the pilot results in the current release, ANGEL LMS 7.1 and plan on refining the interface further in the 7.2 release. More information about ANGEL is available at <http://angellearning.com/>.

David Mills, Chief Technology Officer at ANGEL Learning, reports that “This project has significantly increased our accessibility support and has proven very popular with our users. The collaborative nature of this project resulted in a significantly better incorporation of the standards than we could have achieved on our own.” David reports that one customer is using the newly-released features already, and that “at our user conference I hosted a round table on accessibility and shared a little about the tool, how it works and how to activate it; so there may be more adoptions coming soon!”

Sakai Project:
The Sakai Project is a community source software development effort to design, build and deploy a new Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) for higher education. The Project began in January, 2004. Access For All has been integrated into Sakai tools as a transformation service, which stores and retrieves user preferences and adapts interfaces and content on the fly. This work was performed by the University of Toronto’s Adaptive Technology Resource Centre as a result of their participation in the SALT Partnership. More information about Sakai is available at: <http://www.sakaiproject.org/>.

In addition to the implementations just described, which are all usable products available now, the following implementations are prototypes or future products in the planning stages:

Teachers’ Domain Demonstration Site:
Teachers' Domain is an online educational service that helps teachers enhance their students' learning experiences and advance their own teaching skills. The Teachers' Domain collections include classroom-ready multimedia resources for use in lessons or independent study. The Accessibility Demonstration shows how Access For All will allow Teachers' Domain to provide resources that are appropriate for each learner, when the Access For All standard is implemented. WGBH is currently awaiting a response to a proposal submitted to NSF to carry out this work. Aspects of the work may also be completed with other sources of funding. For more information visit <http://www.teachersdomain.org/> (the Teachers’ Domain online service) or <http://www.teachersdomain.org/accessdemo> (the accessibility demonstration)

Moodle/Shibboleth Access For All Integration Proof of Concept:
University of Wisconsin-Madison has been involved in the IMS Tools Interoperability Specification Working Group. As a part of that effort, Dirk Herr-Hoyman has built a proof-of-concept demonstration of ACCLIP and Shibboleth, using Moodle and a tool called ConceptTutor. The ConceptTutor tool is shown to be accessible with multiple views that are aligned with the Alternatives to Visuals user preference. Mr. Herr-Hoyman and colleagues demonstrated this tool at the Internet 2 Member Meeting in 2006 and discussed it in meetings at the Alt-I-lab Conference in 2006.

IBM User Preference Services Integration:
After some involvement from IBM’s Lotus Learning Group in earlier years of the project, IBM did not renew their IMS membership. In the last year of the project, however, the IBM Accessibility Architecture and Development group joined IMS and the Accessibility Working Group in order to determine how the Access For All specifications would fit into their architecture for a preference server and to help shape the future direction of accessibility within IMS. 

Rich Schwerdtfeger, Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist and Chair, IBM Accessibility Architecture Review Board, says about the work of the SALT Partnership, “Our assessment of this work is that it is a significant breakthrough in the industry but that it needs more wider adoption and not just in the learning space. ACCMD has applicability beyond the learning space in that it allows resources to be self describing. Take AOL - a large rich media  aggregator. AOL would benefit from ACCMD in that they aggregate content from different areas and allow the selection of content that best fits a modality. The combination with ACCLIP allows for user specified content once  transformations/replacement/aggregation are performed. IBM is developing an SOA preference server in research which when used with ACCMD described information address accessibility concerns outside the typical accessibility of content that the W3C addresses.”

He went on to explain, “What your project has done that the W3C and others have not is address a much broader range of users. That work is very valuable to IBM. We are in the early stages of addressing how ACCMD/ACCLIP would be fully adopted. I am looking to see how this work can be applied to not only the learning space at IBM but also other the general content provider area - mainstream.”

Mr. Schwerdtfeger is a powerful advocate for accessibility and will help ensure the sustainability of the IMS Accessibility Working Group.

IMS Compliance Program

The Access For All specifications will also benefit from the emerging IMS Compliance Program, which improves interoperability in the worldwide implementation of IMS specifications by establishing realistic measures of interoperability and provided fee-based testing services. By including the accessibility specifications in this process, IMS is ensuring that the value of the specifications will extend into the future. Any revisions to the specifications will also be included.